As many as possible. When a room has been put to bed for the winter and then needs to be ‘woken up’, there is a lot to do. There is the acid-free tissue paper that needs to be removed, folded and put back into storage for the next winter clean.

Some rooms have curtains that need to be lifted up and adjusted, after the winter when they were allowed to hang down whilst being dusted.

Mrs. Child’s Dressing Room’s curtains being raised for the new season, after the Winter Clean at Osterley Park (image: Laura Brooks)

I can’t give you an exact number for the house overall, but to give you an idea of how many people are needed to make sure each room is spick and span, ready for opening, just take a look at the Long Gallery. This room alone required three volunteers and one Assistant House Steward to dust and vacuum this 130ft long space. And that’s just one (rather long) room. Not all four people are visible in the picture below. That’s because one volunteer is just out of shot on the right and the other one was the photographer.

Two volunteers and an Assistant House Steward working in the Long Gallery, in preparation for opening Osterley Park House (image: Laura Brooks)

Not counting the basement, the Breakfast Room, the Adam Room, the corridors and Grand Stair, there are 12 rooms on display, which all need to be cleaned and made ready for visitors to see them. This many rooms calls for teamwork, which is why each season, there are so many people pulling together, both volunteers and staff, to ensure the house is ready to welcome visitors so they can once again, or for the first time, enjoy the delights there are on offer.

Beginning to prepare Eating Room for the 2014 season at Osterley Park House (image: Laura Brooks)

Over the winter, we have been blogging about ‘putting the house to bed.’ A few weeks ago, the team began to prepare the house for its first day of the new season. In doing this, we were echoing the servants who worked at Osterley all those years ago and whose responsibility it was to get the house ready for the family and their guests, when they came to stay (although the servants then probably wouldn’t have been using a Henry vacuum cleaner to clean the floors).